Today, I watched a video by Matt D’Avella and read posts on decision fatigue, parenting, and bodyweight exercises.
Commitment to Your Craft
Matt released an insightful video, “My Hoarding Secret,” that talks about his decade-old collection of hard drives. While these hard drives hold every project he has worked on since he began freelancing, he thinks the chances are slim that he’ll actually need them in the future. He emphasizes three points in the video:
- Even if you are a minimalist, there may always be a few things you hold onto for irrational reasons. To an extent, that’s okay.
- Put everything you have into everything you do.
- But, don’t take yourself so damn seriously all of the time. You can give yourself some slack and be okay.
Bodyweight Exercises and Muscle Growth
I’m curious about how effective my exercise routine can be if I decide to not go back to the gym once it opens. I’ve been spending 20-30 minutes almost every day (abiding by the 2-Day Rule) doing bodyweight workouts at home since mid-March 2020. I also go running or hiking a few times a week, but I don’t plan for or measure that and it’s never a long-distance run. Anyway, I’m curious about building muscle mass from bodyweight exercises. I speculate that increasing time under tension (TUT) and performing reps until failure may be sufficient for strength training and building muscle mass. Here’s what I learned.
First, I read an article by Jason Ferruggia, which is basically just a sales pitch. He affirms that you can build muscle from bodyweight training, but it takes time, discipline, and an understanding of how muscle growth actually happens (hint, doing more reps doesn’t necessarily mean more muscle growth). The catch is, you have to buy his 90-Day guide. Moving on!
I haven’t yet read, but plan to read, these three articles.
- “3 Simple Methods to Build Muscle Mass with Only Bodyweight Exercises,” on Military.com, but copyrighted to the Albuquerque Journal.
- “Can You Build Muscle with Bodyweight Exercises?” by Nick Holt on the BuiltLean blog.
- Another article of the same name, “Can You Build Muscle With Bodyweight Exercises?” from Coach Magazine.
Decision Fatigue & Parenting
Finally, I read an article where a mom tracked every question her two kids asked her that required her to make a decision. It’s titled “Redux” and is from the blog, The Last Word on Nothing. I’m not a parent. My wife and I don’t plan on ever being parents. This article was simultaneously hilarious and illustrative. I’ll share it with my mom and see what she thinks since she raised four sons.
The featured image is by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.
